How to print from mobile applications

Some time ago a few of you asked me for the ability to generate documents and print them from mobile devices. We had already tried to tackle the problem a few months ago, but the results that could be achieved weren’t satisfactory: there’s no common method for all the devices, and natively, iOS only supports AirPrint printers.

During development of version 12.0 we figured out how to square the circle: we noticed that in the mobile environment hardware producers have adopted the habit of providing an application to be used as the driver for their printers. So what we needed was to be able to create PDFs to send to these applications.

Beginning with Instant Developer 12.0, the report generator, already present in previous versions, can also be used in offline applications.

So if you need to print a bill or an invoice from a device, you can simply prepare the book as you would have done in traditional web applications, print it to PDF, and send it to the device’s operating system, asking it to open the file with one of the other installed applications that can send it to be printed.

Starting now, you can give the man in this week’s photo an easier way to print the results of his work. 🙂